Zuora and Salesforce: How we Automated our Billing Process
Updated June 06, 2017
Zuora and Salesforce: How we Automated our Billing Process
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Zuora
We are using Zuora for our monthly invoicing as well as revenue reporting. We leverage the Zuora for Salesforce functionality so that our sales people build Zuora quotes within Salesforce which sync to Zuora automatically once a customer becomes billable.
Zuora allows us to automate our billing process as well as provides flexibility to adjust our products and prices, which was much more limited using out of the box Salesforce opportunity products previously.
Zuora allows us to automate our billing process as well as provides flexibility to adjust our products and prices, which was much more limited using out of the box Salesforce opportunity products previously.
- The sync with Salesforce. The ability for Zuora and Salesforce to sync eliminates manual transfer of data and areas of human error.
- Flexibility of setup. With all the various types of products and different revenue recognition rules, Zuora allows us to set up the rules we need to fit our business model.
- Ease of use. Creating and posting bill runs is simple and straight forward. With a few clicks of a button you are able to create and post invoices for all customers.
- The service team. I have had a great experience working alongside the Zuora consultant team. They have been easy to work with and have the ability to suggest effective solutions to ensure Zuora meets our business requirements.
- The new reporting module is definitely a step in the right direction, but the reporting module could still be better. Mirroring the drag and drop functionality of Salesforce would be great with the ability to create custom dashboards from the data. The 'run detail' vs 'run summary' reporting is a bit confusing. The 'Hide details' functionality in Salesforce would be better. Also, the fact that you can not provide a link directly to a Zuora report is pretty frustrating.
- Ability to bulk import quotes from the SF side that integrates with Zuora. During our Zuora setup we were very surprised that the ability to bulk create Zuora quotes that sync to Zuora was not possible. This caused a real headache for our setup and it would be great if Zuora allowed for this.
We moved from Xero to Zuora for our invoicing. We now use Zuora for invoice management and automated billing. We would like to long term do more research to automate the payment piece, which now still occurs outside of Zuora while leveraging the payment run functionality to mark invoices as paid. We use Zuora as our current reporting tool for revenue recognition and accounting close period. However, we will be implementing a robust general ledger in the next 6 months as we scale.
Zuora Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Quick Initial Response | Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times |
No - We are under the standard support plan and find the email based support very responsive and able to meet our needs.
I have had very positive interactions with Zuora consultants, specifically those we have engaged in professional services around implementation and migration assistance. Where their service has truly stood out, however, is in those times they have gone above and beyond, being generous with their time to ensure we had what we needed to move forward.